Mexico City—Of all the arguments against nuclear power in Mexico, the high costs of building the complex infrastructure to produce it is perhaps one of the most easily refuted.
“With what was spent, for example, on the Dos Bocas refinery, a couple of nuclear reactors could easily have been built; with the 20 billion dollars that it ended up costing, two reactors could easily have been built at the Laguna Verde Nuclear Power Plant. That is the size of the investment, more or less,” explains mathematical physicist and doctor of engineering Armando Gómez in an interview.
“It is totally feasible to build more nuclear plants (in Mexico),” continues the expert, a member of the National Institute of Nuclear Research (ININ). “In fact, we should do it, because nuclear energy is the perfect ally, along with renewables, to confront climate change.”
This is what Gómez, also former president of the Mexican Nuclear Society, says, highlighting that one of the great advantages of this energy source is that there are no emissions of greenhouse gases, the accumulation of which in the atmosphere is one of the main causes of the current climate crisis.
While in a nuclear power plant electricity is produced by heating water so that the resulting steam drives turbines coupled to electric generators, which is what happens in a thermoelectric plant, in the latter this is done by burning coal, fuel oil or natural gas, and in the former it is due to the effect of the energy that is released in large quantities in a nuclear fission; a reaction by which an atom is divided.
It is no coincidence that, within the framework of the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 22 countries committed to tripling installed nuclear power, recognising the key role of this energy source in achieving a net balance of zero greenhouse gas emissions.
“If we really want to make a difference, we have to consider building more nuclear plants, that’s a fact. And of course we have to stop burning fossil fuels,” Gomez urges, warning that the use of hybrid or electric cars will not really provide a real solution until the electricity that powers them is “cleaned up.”
“If we are going to replace gasoline-burning cars with electric cars, but that electricity is generated by burning coal in a coal-fired power plant, or by burning natural gas, then we are not really solving the problem,” he says. “And if the world is slowly moving towards an electric car market, a refinery, from my point of view, was no longer so necessary now.”
Another important advantage, says Gomez, is the high energy density contained in the nuclei of atoms. For example, a uranium dioxide tablet, with a size similar to that of two aspirins stacked on top of each other, has as much energy as practically a ton of coal.
Compared to oil, the same pellet is equivalent to three barrels; “and to equal the stored energy of that pellet we would have to burn two tons of wood, 2 thousand kilos of wood, or 481 cubic meters of natural gas,” continues the ININ specialist, emphatic in that the fission products, which are highly radioactive, are not released into the environment, but would be collected and stored in nuclear power plants.
#Nuclear #energy #option #country
